Ablebody
Ablebody’s Christoph Hochheim live at Bowery Ballroom; photographed by Jonathon Bernstein.
Ablebody are readying their awaited anticipated debut album Adult Contemporaries available now from Lolipop Records, presenting us a view to an afternoon with the brothers Anton & Christoph Hochheim captured by Lily X for the “Gaucho”. Reconnecting with natural parks of splendor and Romanesque statues & pillars; Ablebody once again manages to find away to accurately find visuals that both compliment & underscore the more understated nuances that exist in the sound from one of the west coast’s best (& best kept secret) groups. Christoph introduced the new video with the following privy thoughts including lyrics & all:
The song itself came fairly quickly with the rhythmic cadence and syllables landing just as they sound on the final version, just without any actual lyrical content. For some reason the words Gaucho, Jason and Starlight kept coming up in the chorus which i thought was odd and pretty far from the normal bank of words I use as placeholders when writing. I normally sing about love gained/lost so thought it’d be fun to write a song re-contextualizing my friend Jason as a drug slinging cowboy who works out of Hotel Starlight and gets found in a river basin ha. I’ve been obsessed with Hotel Cecil in LA which has a rich history of housing many famous psychopaths and more recently the inexplicable death of Elisa Lam and like the idea of a place driving people to madness. Also, Hotel Starlight is a weird image I’ve had in my mind since childhood which i think came from a book but can’t remember for certain, either way it’s a deserted desert hotel that I have a vivid visual of and gives me the feeling of being lost in a dream but finding solace in that feeling, very odd and I’m not sure if it’s entirely invented but it seemed fitting in the song.
Sorry that got so long-winded ha not sure if it’s helpful at all. The video isn’t really based on the lyrical content but more an attempt to capture the mood of madness with two brothers surrounded by ornate relics of the past who are willfully exiled from society living in a house together that’s slowly driving them mad, kinda a playful take on Grey Gardens.
I attached the lyrics below if you’re curious.
“Gaucho”
jason
you said you learned your lesson
but you lost your head and sensibilityjason
a tricky situation
but i cant work out what your facility’s aboutpsycho
stay a night
gaucho
starlightjason
supplies the medication
that’ll put your head on disabilityjason
quick to condemnation
when your pencil lead spouts your obscenities and doubtjason
they said he left the station
but its been some time since i’ve last heard from himjason
he’s in the river basinpsycho
stay a night
gaucho
(one more night)
starlight
